Daughters of Oedon
by periferal
Summary: Nadja, the Hunter, took a mad old hunter's daughter to raise as her own in the dream. Said daughter, Trapped, went mad and took the first Hunter's deal and sealed her mother away forever. Nadja's husbands, who dream with her, grieve, and ever onward Maria mourns and Ludwig screams in madness. An exercise in non-linear storytelling.


_Important notes for this fic:_

_1: Nadja, Theoden, and Leo are original hunters. They are in a relationship, and consider themselves married. Nadja is "the" Hunter of Bloodborne canon, Theoden is a Church boy with a snake problem, and Leo is the last apprentice of Father Gascoine._  
_2: Father Gascoine is chained up in the backyard._  
_3: Nadja adopted/kidnapped Gascoine's daughter, who is named Viola._  
_4: This story is not told linearly._  
_5: Some original characters will also be Bloodborne OCs, but not Bloodborne as we know it._

_Bear with me, aspects of this story shall cohere, at least temporarily._

The sky is black when Theoden wakes.

He blinks, and sees the red moon in the clouds. He puts his hand over Leo's mouth to wake him.

"She has driven her mad," he says. His voice is filled to the brim with resigned terror, and Leo's eyes are wide as he wakes, gasping. "I fear what we will find outside.

The curtains in Viola's room have been torn to unhappy shreds. The small stuffed bear Leo sewed in a fit of parental confusion has been left on her neatly made bed. The room is cleaner than it has ever been. The books have been taken.

The workshop is clean. These books, filled with gibberish by the well-meaning maintainer of the dream, would be of no use to her.

"The messengers are crying," Leo says. His voice is rough and resigned. Theoden takes his hand, finds it clammy and cold. "We all knew this was coming."

Theoden finds what he is looking for: Maria's gravestone, smashed in half, the dirt disturbed and clotted with wetted blood. "She didn't."

Leo makes a noise of genuine surprise. "She kept her trapped," he says. "It was to be expected."

The messengers' sobbing increases. The doll is not in her place, but small, neat footprints are burned into the stone of the path to the garden.

Theoden looks up. The moon has grown in size, he thinks.

"We will be understanding," he says. "She was trapped. It is only." He swallows, sick with the words he is about to say. "It is only natural she would trap her in response."

"Yes," Leo says. He will not release Theoden's hand. "As always."

They follow the burning footsteps to see the doll sitting on the ground in front of the open gate to the back garden.

"_What are you doing?" Gherman demanded. "I have left it open for a reason!"_

"_I am locking you in, old man," Nadja says. "I need another year."_

The burned steps continue across the field of white flowers. Gherman looks up with he hears the clink of Theoden's armor.

"She has chosen," he says. He gestures to the headless corpse at his feet. "All is well."

Theoden understands. He goes to walk towards the body of his daughter, but before he can move, Leo screams, and tears his blade in two.

"I will kill you, old man!" he cries. "You will pay for this violation."

"She chose," Gherman begs. "It was a mercy!"

"She will forget me!"

Theoden coughs, collapsing to his knees as pale slime forces itself out of his mouth.

Leo stops in his tracks, crouching at his husband's side.

"You partook," Gerhman whispers. "Is there no sacrament your Church will not consume?" He stands, pushing himself slowly out of his wheelchair. Theoden realizes that he has removed the bandages over his eyes. "I must destroy you," he says. "Before you take Her place."

He has the grace to look mournful as he clicks the pieces of his Burial Blade together with practiced ease. "Run," he tells Leo. "You are the least tainted, you may still have a chance at peace."

Leo laughs. "I was trained by Father Gascoine, a stranger my wife chained in her garden. The night she forced me through the Lamp high above the false Ioselfka's clinic, I was stained with his blood as he turned from his poor wife to me." He bares his teeth and helps Theoden to his feet. "I will free you," he says. "And then I will find my own freedom."

True panic begins to bleed into Gherman's voice. "She has turned all the graves," he says. "She has sealed the Dream in a mad hope to free herself from your wife. My scythe is your only way out."

"I don't _care_," Leo says. "My child is gone. _You took her from me_."

He springs forward, slashing at Gherman's face.

"I'm sorry," Theoden says. "I have no choice." He raises his holy blade and sheathes it.

Gherman rolls out of Leo's way. "You always have a choice," he says. He has the time to smile sadly. "I have never fought this battle two against one." He raises his scythe to ward off another of Leo's attacks, his arm shuddering as the blades clash and spark. "I pray I win."

Maria finds Viola standing on the roof of her family's house, staring up at the moon.

"I had the dream again," she says. She leans her head back against her girlfriend's shoulder as Maria wraps her arms around her chest.

"The blood one or the crow one?" Maria asks. She has become an expert on Viola's nightmares after a year of sharing her bed.

"The blood one," Viola says. "It kept screaming."

"Mm," Maria says. She follows Viola's gaze. "You can see the spider," she says.

"Yeah," Viola says. "Those are craters, right?" She asks this question frequently. Maria's unshakeable confidence in the mundanity of the world helps, even when she imagines a towering nightmare crawling its way across the moon's surface.

"Yep," Maria says. "And nothing else."

Viola kisses her. "Thank you," she says. She tucks a strand of Maria's hair behind her ear. She hasn't told her girlfriend about her true parents. Even if this moon is only craters, her memories of the other world are too detailed to be denied.

She will decipher the writing the diary she woke up with, even if only in moments stolen from Maria's watchful gaze.

Maria of the Clocktower glares at Nadja. "I cannot let you see them," she says. "I will kill you if you try to pass."

"I know," Nadja says. This is not her first pass through this part of the nightmare. She takes her helmet off, shoving it into the unknown space the equipment she is not wearing goes. Usually, when she speaks to Maria, she does not cover her face. "It's me." She sighs, and sits heavily on a stone. "Do you remember the loops?"

Maria smiles wryly. "Do you mean all the times I have died? Yes. It seems the rotation of the dream reaches even this forsaken place."

"This is the last one," Nadja says. "There is no way into this place anymore. No one will come a-hunting." She hasn't told Maria this yet. She likes pretending that she's just on another exploratory mission, checking up on mad Ludwig and keeping the population of shambling monstrosities that they don't bother those poor denizens who still have their minds too much. "My daughter has sealed me in, and herself out."

Maria visibly does not believe her. "That is impossible," she says. "I know what Gehrman has done to my resting place, he told me the one time he let himself through." Her grip on her blade tightens. "You are trying to trick me." She walks over to the lamp she guards and kneels. Black mists form, but she does not vanishes, only falls backwards.

"I heard crying," she says.

"I don't know what she did," Nadja says. "But she was determined to make sure I could never dream again."

"How are you not dead?"

"I am careful," Nadja says. "And I fear no consequences to gorging myself." Her smile is wry and almost pretty, despite her bruised skin and matted hair. "We are special, it seems, the lineage of hunters who deal with Gherman at the beginning of this eternal night." At Maria's confused expression, she adds, "He told me many things to try and make me take his deal."

"His kindness?" Maria asks. "He spoke of such a thing, at times. I wonder if he trapped the night for that purpose..." Her gaze sharpens. "You are not here to mourn, I see it in your eyes. Your grief over your daughter's betrayal is old, even if it is news to me. What do you want?"

"I know how to heal the victims of the Church's cruel experiments," Nadja says. "You must come with me. We shall speak to the Orphan. It will help us."

Maria's eyes narrow. "That thing is deadly, even for an old one," Maria says.

Nadja sighs. "This place is making them sicker, and my daughter has sealed the only path out. This is, at least, what I believe. Will you join me?" Maria knows what she will say next even before she says it. "You cannot change my mind."

Maria takes her hand, ignores the texture of black feathers. "Yes," she says. "I know this well."

Strange friends, Maria thinks. Nadja is young, and mad, and their is a sickness in her eyes different from the beast plague, but the patients have suffered so long. Maria is desperate, and all guards fail. This, she thinks as she follows Nadja down the path, is better than yet another death.

"Is this yours?" Maria asks. She sets the book down on the table carefully, mindful of the weakening leather binding. "I think I've seen you struggling with it."

"Yeah," Viola says. "I woke up with it, and it's the only one I can't read. The other ones are compendiums, but this one I think is important. It's got my name in it."

"How do you know, if you can't read it?"

Viola shakes her head. "I just do." She can't be angry at Maria for finding it. She's been so secretive she didn't even extract any promises about it.

"I can read it," Maria says, with all the casualness of a comment about the moon. She laughs, and the sound is harsh enough that it cuts through Viola's numb shock.

Viola stands, before collapsing back in her chair. "You... _what_?" she asks. "How?"

"I was a Hunter," Maria says. "I always thought I was the only one who remembered." She laces her fingers together, staring at Viola with an expression she's never seen before. "You've seen Ludwig, haven't you? And Eileen?"

Viola stares at her blankly. "I never hunted," she says, finally. "I think. My mother kept me trapped." Her hands start shaking despite her best efforts. "I think I fed her to the nightmare."

"Well," Maria says. "Do you want to get her back?"

The Gascoine and Viola who raised her in this life are kind and bland, one perpetually unfaithful, the other unforgiving.

"Yes," Viola says. "I don't know how."

Maria sighs. "I hoped you would say no." She kisses Viola across the table. "I love you. Do you remember Ebriates?"

"No," Viola says.  
"That is well," Maria says. "We are to visit her."

"Do not worry," the wizened old woman says. "You shall be well again soon."

"Do you know where-" Maricelle tries to ask, but the fluid begins to drip and her eyes droop and nothing else leaves her mouth.

"I wonder how long this one will sleep?" Gherman asks. He watches her with bandaged eyes.

"We shall see," Iosefka says. "We shall see."

"You must fight Gherman," the Doll says in her calm way. Her jointed fingers tap against the pleats of her skirt. "He grows impatient."

Nadja shrugs calmly. "My daughter is now ten years old," she says. "That is two more years than she would have lived had I allowed her to take 'safe passage.' I will stay as long I need to keep her safe."

"That is not how you end the night," the Doll says. She does not care about Gherman's worries for any more reason than she is his doll and he is her maker. If Nadja objects, she will not mind. "Do you wish to doom the world to the endless hunt for so long?"

"I will keep my daughter safe," she says. "No matter what."

"Is this safety?" the Doll asks.

"Yes," Nadja says, with unchanging confidence.

Maria meets Viola under star light. The park is dark at night, though safer than one might expect, and old man Ludwig is calmer when the moon is dark.

"You're beautiful," Maria says, blunt and wide-eyed, hair in uncombed tangles.

Viola should not be so pleased by the sudden attention. She does not like strangers approaching her in dark places, but Maria is safety, and Viola knows this from the moment she looks at her.

"I'm crazy," Viola warns. She smiles, hoping to someday share how crazy she is.

Maria laughs. "Don't worry," she says. "So am I."

"Dear," Gascoine says, hanging up his coat and hat on the hook, noting two pairs of shoes tucked carefully inside the door and removing his own big boots, "I'm pregnant."

Viola takes it better than he expects her too. She does not scream, or cry, or declare him a mad fool who should never leave for the hunt again. Instead, she looks up at him and places a hand on his flat stomach, hairy enough that she can feel them even though he's still wearing an undershirt.

"How?" she asks. "Is it what you hunt?"

Gascoine shakes his head. "His voice spoke to me," he says. "The Church hunters call him Oedon, his symbol runs through the Cathedral Ward." He shudders, unsure of his own memories even more than usual. "His voice swirls, and it..." He puts his hands over Viola's hand. "This child is yours, and mine, and his. She is strange. I am sure of it."

Viola smiles. "This is mad," she says.

"She will have your eyes," Gascoine says. "I am sure of it." His gaze is far away.

Viola, despite what Gascoine might imagine, knew what she was getting into when she married a Hunter. The little music box is not an accident, not some unintentional association.

"I am glad," Viola says. "I am glad."

"Father?" Nadja whispers.

The voice settles comfortably about her shoulders. "Take care, my daughters. Your night shall be long indeed."


End file.
